I write
for my own kind
I do not pitch my voice
that every phrase be heaard
by those who have no choice:
their quality of mind
must be withdrawn and till,
as moth that answers moth
across a roaring hill.
1945.
Out of this mulch of ready
sentiment,
gritty with the threads
of flinty violence,
I am the green shoot asking for the flower,
soft as the feathers of the snow’s cold
swans.
John Hewitt, from After
the Fire.
I, the offspring of planters,
am
because of
all the brued men
in Ulster clay, because of
rock and Glen
and mist and cloud and quality
of air
as native in my thought as
any here.
This is my country. If
my people came
from England here four centuries ago,
the only trace that's left is in my name.
Kilmore, Armagh, no other sod can show
the weathered stone of our first burying.
Born in Belfast, which drew the landless
in,
that river-straddling, hill-rimmed town,
I cling
to the inflexions of my origin.
Though creed-crazed zealots
and the ignorant crowd,
long-nurtured, never checked, in ways of
hate,
have made our streets a byword of offence,
this is my country, never disavowed.
When it is fouled, shall I not remonstrate?
My heritage is not their violence.
John Hewitt
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